


Visions

by lara_s



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 04:23:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5652334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lara_s/pseuds/lara_s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prophets know past, present and future.  Sometimes they share that information.  A short 'before the occupation of Bajor' story that references a few of the DS9 characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visions

The child’s parents had some sort of business with the Kai.  Vedek Torban knew not what it was.  Only that they were likely to be indisposed for the entire day and, as most of the monastery staff was off on a retreat, he’d been the lucky one nominated for babysitting duty.  At least that’s what the messenger said.  With a sigh, Torban goes to collect his new charge.

The girl is a pretty little thing and rather self-composed for her apparent six or seven years of age.  When Torban arrives and is pointed out to her, she silently leaves her mother’s side and takes his hand without fuss or a second glance backward.    

Maybe this won’t be too bad, he thinks.  “Would you like to explore the gardens?”  He asks her the first thing that comes to mind.

“Ok,” she replies solemnly. 

She likes the neatly rowed vegetables plots and is transfixed by the ornate flower arrangements but pronounces the meditation pond boring.

She asks for a snack next so they stop by the kitchens.  Vedek Jonah smirks at them from across the room, clearing feeling superior that he had not been tasked with chaperoning a young child for the day.

“That man there doesn’t like you very much.”  The child’s soft words whispered across their table echo Torban’s own thoughts.  He looks at her with surprise, astonished at her intuition. 

Snack finished, Torban sets her up in the corner of his office so he can get some work done.  For a time, she’s content to sit quietly reading a primer about the prophets that he finds for her.  Occasionally she puts the scroll down, asking him to elaborate on some point or another. 

“The prophets instruct us to be kind to our neighbors, but what if our neighbors aren’t kind to us?  Why do the prophets want us to stay on Bajor?  There are other people who fly through the stars?  Why don’t we?”

Sometimes she’s satisfied with the answers he gives; sometimes it’s abundantly clear from the expression on her face that she isn’t.  He isn’t irritated by her interruptions, he rather enjoys it actually.  The child is intelligent and clearly understands the text better than half of Torban’s class of initiates who are twice times her age. 

“Torban, do you speak to the prophets?” she asks as she places the finished reading material back on the shelf.

“They have revealed themselves to me on occasion.”

“I should like to speak with them someday.”  Her voice is wistful. 

He smiles indulgently.  “If you feel the call, perhaps you will grow up to become a Vedek.  Come here for a moment child.”

She walks over to him slowly, warily, but obedient.  He reaches out, taking a firm grasp of her ear.  Her pagh is indeed strong he recognizes instantly.  Willful.  Her faith is true but there’s something else there too, something he can’t quite make out.  This mere slip of a child has a powerful essence within her like none he’s ever known before.  He stands there holding her ear as visions, much like from an orb, flood through him.

_Strange harsh men, all scales and ridges and armor swarming through the capital city.  The off-worlders are shouting commands and gunning down Bajorans by the thousands.  Fear and terror abound.  He witnesses the subjugation of a nation, of his people._

_A teenager, it’s the girl child, beautiful despite the rags she wears.  She’s detained at some sort of check point.  Eyes blazing she argues with three of the foreigners who hold her there.  In dismay Torban watches her future unfold.  The men brutally beat and rape her, leaving her for dead in the street.  In that instant, he, the silent observer of what is to be, actually sees her pagh harden with anger, can sense the intense hatred and darkness creep over her very soul._

_Evidently she doesn’t die.  At least not then, not at the hands of those savage strangers.  Here she is, older now, deferred to and respected, she sits alone in a well-appointed room on Bajor.  The loud sounds of celebration going on outside the walls intrude on her contemplation.  Torban somehow understands the evil ones are gone, run off for good.  He can tell she’s glad for that of course.  The pride and self-satisfaction on her face is evident.  She helped liberate her people.  And yet it’s clear she doesn’t rest easy, staring out the window up into the sky.  Her glance keeps going back to a padd on her desk.  A padd with a picture of another foreigner, this one a different type, dark skinned and with a smooth unridged nose.  It isn’t the same white hot fury she has towards the others, but she doesn’t much like this man and what he represents.  There is something important about him…_

_The vision flashes to a hospital room.  Again, the child woman is present.  A Bajoran man lies prone on a bed.  There’s another woman there, also Bajoran, along with a man, not the man from the padd but of the same race, who looks to be a doctor.  “Bariel’s dead,” the doctor pronounces, clearly upset.  The women both look tired, haunted.  They are both angry.  There’s an animosity there between them, tinged with a faint grudging respect.  They begin to exchange heated words Torban can’t make out as the scene fades._

_Torban gasps as he now sees one of the scale covered aliens from before, eyes flashing unholy red.  The creature enters a shrine, killing a woman in meditation there.  The pah-wraiths released?  No!  It can’t be.  The man’s features melt, for lack of a better word, until he appears Bajoran but with the same possessed eyes looking out of his face._

_The images come faster now, disjointed, in quick succession.  Torban recognizes little and understands even less.  Always, in the background of it all, the child-woman.  Her life would be defined by conflict, both externally and within herself. She would face a crisis of faith but ultimately, and at great cost, emerge victorious to walk with the prophets._

As suddenly as they’d began, the visions end.  Torban comes to with a start, releasing her ear and staring at the child in front of him in shock.  In an instant he’d seen her and Bajor’s destiny.  It was not a pleasant one and it rocked him to the core.

“You saw something in my pagh!”  Her eyes gleam.  “You must have.  Tell me!”

“You are indeed touched by the prophets my dear,” he says with a touch of awe.  This child would come to do both great and terrible things.  He doesn’t know how to make sense of what he’s seen.  Or if he should even try.

She nods, pleased by his pronouncement, unconcerned about his obvious trepidation.

Her parents come to pick her up shortly thereafter.  She refuses to go with them.  “I want to stay.  I am meant to join the order,” she says stubbornly. 

“Very well Adami,” her father relents quickly in the face of his daughter’s insistence.

Winn Adami runs a hand through her long blond hair and smiles a smug smile.  She knows she is destined for prominence.  Why, Vedek Torban has all but said so.  This is only the beginning, only the start of her journey.

Three weeks later the Cardassians arrive on Bajor.


End file.
